American Airlines makes emergency landing, all 246 on board safe

An American Airlines flight carrying 231 passengers and a crew of 15 made an emergency landing soon after the aircraft took off from the Indira Gandhi International Airport around Monday midnight, officials said on Tuesday.

"Emergency landing procedures were carried out by airport fire and medical service. As an American Airlines flight requested to land back here, due to technical difficulties," a senior Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) official told IANS.

According to the official, the aircraft landed back safely and that all required safety procedures were carried out.

"All 231 passengers are safe. The aircraft took-off at 12.25am and landed back at 12.47am," the official said.

American Airlines, which operates daily-direct flights between New Delhi and Chicago, said that the flight commander requested to make an emergency landing due to a technical snag in one of the engines.

"Captain contacted Delhi authorities and informed them that he would be making an emergency landing because of a problem with the electrical generator system on the right engine," said the company in a statement, adding that the aircraft landed after dumping fuel.

The company further said that technical repairs were being carried out on its Boeing 777-200 ER (extended range) aircraft and that the flight will take off again for Chicago by 4.00pm.

The statement further added that the passengers were accommodated in city hotels.

Passengers on board said they suffered from an information blackout as they kept sitting for several hours, first in the parked aircraft on the runway and then in the airport terminal.

"We had no information for several hours as to what was happening, though the airline tried to make us comfortable and then shifted us after three hours to The Grand," Gautam Dey, a research student at Stanford University, told IANS.